The IRB has announced its match officials list for the second stage of the 2014 IRB Junior World Championships overnight, with two Australians appointed to referee two of the games in New Zealand on Sunday.

We’re excited to announce that Australian Rugby will be moving to a new online system for national competition management and participant registration for the 2014 Rugby Sevens season and the 2015 club Rugby season.

We’re set for an exciting year with plenty to look forward to in 2014, including our Qantas Men’s Sevens team competing in the Commonwealth Games (July), the Women’s Rugby World Cup in France (August) and the launch of a new domestic competition – the National Rugby Championship (August).

After 18 months of preparation for the competition, the Junior Gold Cup commences tonight at Ballymore with Brisbane Yellow taking on Gold Coast. The competition has 24 competing centres across Australia with teams in both the 15’s and 17s category will compete over six weeks to see who will be crowned the inaugural Junior Gold Cup champion.

More people participated in Rugby across Australia in the past year than ever before, with 615,809 participants in 2013 compared to the previous year (an increase of 27.5%), with participation in Rugby Sevens a major factor in the increase in participation numbers.

Australia’s best emerging Super Rugby talent will compete against national representative teams from Fiji, Japan, Samoa, Tonga and Argentina in next month’s 2014 IRB Pacific Rugby Cup (PRC) to be held over five weeks across Australia.

Teams from 24 centres across Australia - from Cairns to Perth - have been selected to compete in the inaugural Junior Gold Cup, a national youth championships for Under 15 and Under 17 boys culminating in finals in April next year.

The final match for the Macquarie Bank Australian Schools team on the tour of the United Kingdom and Ireland was against Munster Under 18s. The game was played at the impressive home of Munster Rugby, Thomond Park in Limerick.